A journal charting events in the Middle East and beyond concerning the eventual settlement of the Israel-Palestine situation.

Saturday, 7 October 2017

The other Kurdish poll

As far as Kurdish affairs are
concerned, the world’s attention is currently focused on the independence
referendum held on September 25, 2017 by the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) in north-eastern Iraq and that, despite considerable international
pressure, there was a 92 percent vote in favour, on a 72 percent turnout. Little attention has been paid to the fact
that just three days earlier, another historic Kurdish election took place in
neighbouring Syria.

The 5 million Kurds of Iraq represent
only a small proportion of their 40 million-strong nation. Most Kurds – some 25 million – live within Turkey’s
borders, and nearly 7 million are trapped inside Iran’s extremist Shi’ite
regime.

As for the 2 million Kurds in
Syria, accounting for 15 percent of the population before the civil war, they had
aspired for some time to a degree of autonomy.
The internal uprising in 2011 against the regime of President Bashar
al-Assad gave them their opportunity. As
the civil war inside Syria descended into a maelstrom of at least six separate
conflicts, up in the north the Syrian Kurds were battling Islamic State, and successfully
winning back swathes of Kurd-inhabited territory.

In the early stages of the Syrian civil war. Syrian government forces withdrew from the Kurdish enclaves,
leaving control to local militias. The original three self-governing cantons, namely Afrin Canton, Jazira Canton and Kobani Canton, emerged in 2012, to be joined in 2016 by the autonomous Shahba region as a fourth. Meanwhile the leading
political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), was
establishing the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM),
a coalition based on the concept of grassroots democracy – a concept virtually
revolutionary in the region.

TEV-DEM has been highly successful.
In March 2016 it was agreed that the ever-expanding Kurdish area should be
ruled under a new federal and democratic constitution. Hediya Yousef and Mansur Selum were elected as joint chairmen of a
body established to organise it. The decision to set up a federal government
was, Yousef asserted, in large part driven by the expansion of territories
captured from Islamic State.

"Now,” he said, “after the
liberation of many areas, it requires us to go to a wider and more
comprehensive system that can embrace all the developments in the area, that
will also give rights to all the groups to represent themselves and to form
their own administrations."

The only political camp
fundamentally opposed were Kurdish nationalists, in particular the Kurdish
National Council (KNC), which believes in pressing for a nation-state of Kurdistan rather
than a polyethnic federation as part of Syria. However, on December 28, 2016, after a meeting of the 151-member
Syrian Democratic Council, the new constitution was adopted, Despite objections by the Kurdish nationalist parties, the whole
region was renamed the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. The
constitution, known as the "Charter of the Social Contract", provides
for all citizens to enjoy gender equality, freedom of religion and property rights.

As regards a poll of Kurdish opinion, the DFNS took their
cue from the KRG’s decision to hold an independence referendum in neighbouring
Iraq. They decided to hold their own elections at
about the same time. Accordingly a poll was organized in northern Syria on Friday, September 22, 2017, as the
first of a three-stage process to strengthen Kurdish regional autonomy in the
country.

Voters elected leaders for about
3,700 "communes" spread across the regions of northern Syria where
Kurdish groups have established autonomous rule. The first poll will be followed in November by
votes for local councils, and the process will culminate in January 2018 with
the election of an assembly that will act as a parliament for a federal system
of government in northern Syria.

The reaction of the Assad regime has been astonishing – a virtual volte-face. In August 2017 Faisal Mekdad, Syria's deputy foreign
minister, labelled the elections a joke. "Syria will never ever allow any
part of its territory to be separated," he said.

But
on September 26, according to SANA, the Syrian state news agency, Walid
Muallem, Syria's foreign minister, said that his country was open to the idea
of greater powers for the country's Kurds. They ”want a form of autonomy within
the framework of the borders of the state," he said. "This is
negotiable and can be the subject of dialogue." He indicated that discussion could begin “once
the military campaign of President Bashar al-Assad’s government against
the Islamic State group operating in Syria is over.”

This acceptance on the part of the
Syrian government is likely to be anathema to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Syria’s Kurds may not be seeking independence,
but the degree of autonomy they seem likely to attain can only reinforce the Kurds
in Turkey in their separatist demands. Nor is Erdogan likely to find much
external help in opposing the activities of the DFNS. The Syrian Kurds currently enjoy the support
of both the US and Russia in the anti-IS struggle, and these two key permanent
members of the UN Security Council seem willing to contemplate Kurdish autonomy
within a unified post-war Syria.

The worst
scenario, from Erdogan’s point of view, would be if something like Iraq’s
autonomous Kurdistan were to be established in Syria, and then amalgamate or
federate with Iraq’s KRG. In that eventuality, demands by Turkey’s Kurds to be linked to it in some
way might become irresistible.

Published in the Jerusalem Post on-line, 6 October 2017:http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/A-Mid-East-Journal/The-other-Kurdish-poll-506818Published in the Eurasia Review, 9 October 2017:http://www.eurasiareview.com/09102017-the-other-kurdish-poll-oped/Published in the MPC Journal, 10 October 2017:http://mpc-journal.org/?p=6541

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About Me

I have been commenting on the Middle East scene for over thirty years. I am Middle East correspondent for the on-line journal Eurasia Review, and my articles also appear regularly in the Jerusalem Post, the MPC Journal and elsewhere. Born in London, I was educated at Owen's School and am a graduate of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. A veteran radio and audio dramatist and abridger, I am a past chairman of the Society of Authors’ Broadcasting Committee and the Contributors’ Committee of the Audiobook Publishing Association. In the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2006 I was awarded the MBE for services to broadcasting and drama. My latest book is “The Chaos in the Middle East, 2014-2016”. My other books include “One Man’s Israel”, “One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine” and “The Search for Détente: 2012-2014”.
For a fuller, more personal history, please see the “Biography” page on my website at: www.nevilleteller.co.uk